"Soft and flabby" was how the Con-servatives described Labour's approach to crime in 1992. Tony Blair's response was the trademark slogan that Labour would be "tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime". Gordon Brown, his successor, has similarly sought to out-tough his political foes.rnBut if Labour has mastered the language of law and order, its home secretaries have been remarkably accident-prone. Jacqui Smith, given the job by Mr Brown in 2007, is now facing a parliamentary investigation into her expenses as an mp. That might be survivable, but it follows a build-up of bad news: anonymous whin-geing by unnamed officials that she is no good at her job; complaints about her role in a bizarre police raid on a Tory mp in Parliament in November; and this week an accusation by Dame Stella Rimington, a former head of M15, that the government has been exploiting fear of terrorism to pass laws that infringe civil liberties.
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